I was Almost a Teenage Anthropologist

There’s nothing weirder than a Title that has nothing to do with a story, not even a metaphorical connection, a complete moot point. I would hate if someone did that exact thing in a piece of writing that I would have to read. Just annoying.

For this week I was inspired by Mules and Men: A collection of Black (with a focus on the cultures of Florida and New Orleans) folktales told in a fluid Ethnographical & Autobiographical style by Zora Neale Hurston. This anthology was published in 1935, coming on the eve of Neale Hurston’s 44th year on earth, from this interesting fact I thought forward and tried to connect our lives, my grandfather1 would have been 8 years old around the time of the anthology’s publication. From that visualization of my grandfather as a toddler, I would then imagine an adult somewhere that lived around or near him being exposed to Neale Hurston’s work; it had then dawned on me that I knew near nothing about Neale Hurston and nothing at all deeply about my grandfather. And that was where the extent of our connection seemingly ended. It’s embarrassing to admit, yet I’ll openly do just that, I know nothing about the man that raised me and my time to learn about him has been removed completely. My Grandad died in June of 2020 from a stroke, at the young age of 93. For the periods of time in which we could have had proper interactions where we both could have understood each other, we had barriers. How could my grandfather impart his wisdom about how to deal with family, how to find happiness, and the difficulties and contradictions in attempting to satisfy 4 different women who all seemingly shared the same place in his heart to a four-year-old toddler. And how could I ask questions about happiness, my inferiority complex, Aggressive mood swings, and my inability to find any romantic connections to my Old Man who lived across the Atlantic Ocean. I struggled to cry when the news broke to me because for the longest of times, I only had this fuzzy picture of my grandfather in my head, I was with the man for 38% of my life and he quite literally was the most pronounced male presence (on a total time spent basis) in my life, but I felt a disconnect because I had so little in terms of memories about him. This made me sad weeks after his death and it took me a while to come to the conclusion that you just read above. This raw memory was touched on again when I thought of Mules and Men, in the purest of sense a generation of stories, traditions, anecdotes, lessons, and myths nearly died with my grandfather. Everything about his life, his living between Sierra Leone and America, his large family, and his personality were going to disappear and never be spoken about again, which is worse than death itself. I haven’t been afforded an Ethnography that speaks about the stories that I have missed out on, I haven’t been afforded an Autobiography to hear about the stories he would have told me, I’d only been afforded seven years of peace and beauty that stay somewhere locked deep in my memories that are always too far to relive but just close enough to imagine.

1: This is my maternal grandfather; may he Rest In Power.

Epilogue: I did not know enough about our amazing Zora Neale Hurston due to ignorance on my part and a lack of information provided by school on the other. Of course, I acknowledge her contributions to America as an; Author, Sociologist, Intellectual, and Cultural Icon. But I know little of her background, what drove her to become an anthropologist and a writer, her fears, her dreams, her family. I have committed myself to learning more about Neale Hurston and with what I learn, I will attempt to think about my grandfather in the same vein. As a vulnerable person to be understood.